Jewish Current Issues

The New American Haggadah

David Ulin, the book critic for the Los Angeles Times, interviewed Jonathan Safran Foer this week about The New American Haggadah, the book Foer has been working on for almost a decade.

This Haggadah features a new translation of the traditional text by Nathan Englander, commentary by Jeffrey Goldberg, Lemony Snicket, Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, and Nathaniel Deutsch, designed and illustrated by the Israeli artist and calligrapher Oded Ezer.

Here is a portion of a review by Larry Mark, editor of MyJewishBooks.com, followed by a video of the first eight minutes of the Ulin interview (if you have trouble seeing the video below, you can also see it here). If the review does not make you want to buy the Haggadah, the video will:

Seders have been celebrated for over 100 generations, and perhaps there have been over 7000 known versions of the Haggadah, whether it is from a religious movement, a kibbutz, Maxwell House, Mesorah, a commune, Cokey Roberts, or your own family. Foer writes that a new haggadah does not imply that earlier ones are failed; he just saw a need for one that looks at current issues in today's idiom

This haggadah is an exciting new one and will prompt many seder-table discussions for years to come; the "hyper-literal" translations into English will fascinate. … Across the top of each page is a progressing timeline (by Mia Sara Buch), flowing like sweet malaga wine, from 1250 BCE to 2007 CE. The timeline is in a smaller font and gives a running history of Passover and Jewish communities. For example, for 1387 CE, the timeline mentions Chaucer's publication of "The Canterbury Tales," and his story of a blood libel against the Jews … At the end, you can add to the timeline as years go by. I can imagine each participant adding their own timeline to their copy each year, and seeing how attitudes and comments change over the decades. A keepsake.

… Nathan Englander used to use the Hebrew side of the traditional Maxwell House coffee Haggadah. … He found that the Hebrew is so moving, yet the English translations he saw did not communicate this beauty well enough. The line that clinched it for him was "HaMavdil Bein Kodesh l'Kodesh." In English, many Haggadot translated it as "to differentiate between the Sabbath and the holiday." But in Hebrew what it says is, "to differentiate between holy and holy." To him, the English was missing the poetry and the metaphysical space between "holy" and "holy." …

For example, in "Nishmas kol chai," he translates it as "Were our mouths were filled with a singing like the sea, and our tongues awash with song, as waves-countless, and our lips to lauding, as the skies are wide, and our eyes illumined like the sun and the moon, and our hands spread out like the eagles of heaven, and our feet as fleet as fawns. Still, we would not suffice in thanking you, lord God of us and God of our fathers, in blessing your name for even one of a thousand, thousand, from the thousands of thousands and the ten thousands of ten thousands of times you did good turns for our fathers and for us."

More on The New American Haggadah is here (Huffington Post), here (Stephen Colbert interview), and here (NY Jewish Week review). A second installment of the Ulin-Foer interview is here.

More on Monday

At Haaretz, Avi Shavit has a must-read column on the coming meeting between Benjamin Netanyahu and Barack Obama:

The view from Jerusalem: For 15 years we've been warning them about the Iranian bomb. For 10 years we've been giving them solid evidence. But they ignore us and refuse to budge. They tell us we're Masada-obsessed wackos who haven't recovered from the trauma of Auschwitz. They tell us they're loyal and intelligent and can be trusted. But the facts prove they cannot be trusted. They were wrong in Pakistan and wrong in North Korea and wrong in Osirak. They have betrayed every friend they had in the Middle East. When it transpires they were wrong about Iran as well, they will throw us into the garbage bin of history. But we're no suckers. We know the game and we will disrupt it - we'll preempt them. Instead of withering at their convenience, we'll strike at our convenience. And if the war raises oil prices and brings a Republican to the White House, tough luck. When someone rises to sacrifice you, sacrifice him first.

The view from Washington: The name of the game is "alibi." We know the Shi'ites are resolved and we are weakening and won't stop them. We know we aren't made of the stuff that Harry Truman and John Kennedy were made of. But we have to go through the motions for the sake of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Emirates. We have to go through the motions for Israel and the Jewish community. We've got to win in November. So we're putting on a show that Broadway can only dream of - make-believe warnings, make-believe sanctions, a make-believe military option. Make-believe unlimited support for the Jewish state and moderate Arab state. But after November we're getting rid of the props, dispersing the band and returning the costumes to the storeroom. We'll close some deal with the ayatollahs. We'll get a promise from Ali Khamenei not to set off the first nuclear explosion before 2016. This will ensure that during the second term both the American economy and Iranian centrifuges will be moving full steam ahead. And when the world finds out we were wrong and misled it, we'll say, oops, mistake. We tried, we really did. We have an alibi. Our hands did not enrich that uranium. Really, our heart aches for Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Emirates and Israel. The thought of Israel, especially, floods our Democratic heart with compassion.

My own thoughts about the coming meeting are at American Thinker (“What Needs to Come Out of the Obama-Netanyahy Meeting”) and Commentary’s Contentions (“Obama’s Monday Meeting with Netanyahu”).

Netanyahu on Israel and History

Here are the concluding paragraphs of Benjamin Netanyahu’s Speech to the Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations earlier this week in Jerusalem, and then a short excerpt from the book he mentions, which gives some further insight into the answer to the question he raises in the first paragraph below:

So we’ve got four big challenges. There are many more, but the four big ones: nuclear, missile, cyber, the integrity of our borders. … Now it seems like an impossible task because we’re faced with so many, so many challenges. And the question is how can Israel sustain this? What I’ve described to you how we’ve sustained it so far and beaten the odds, but you sort of take a longer term perspective on this. … And recently I read a book by a wonderful American writer by the name of Will Durant. How many of you read Will Durant? Michael, you and I and then that’s it, oh, a few more. Will Durant was a wonderful writer of history and he wrote many decades ago, a book called “The Story of Civilization”. I think it has roughly 11 or 12 volumes. …

In later years he was helped by his wife who was Jewish. Her name was Ariel. Wonderfully written; tremendous insights; just a work of art, but also a work of keen intelligence and perception. And I read quite a few of these books and I’m re-reading them. You need a respite for – instead of condolences you need relaxation, Richard, and if you can imbibe some insights from people, from very smart elderly historians, it’s a habit that I picked up at home, that’s not a bad idea. So I’ve read Durant over the years and then one day at Ron’s house, I saw this small volume, the smallest book that Will Durant ever wrote. It’s called “The Lessons of History”.

He wrote it in 1960 when he was close to the end of his life. It’s about 100 pages – not a lot. What did he distill from his study of history, his lifelong study of history? Well, I started reading it and it’s a most amazing book. He’s got statements like: “When Oriental fertility meets Western technology, China will be a leading power in the world.” 1960, that’s not bad. Okay? And on and on it goes – every sentence.

Now, this book has good news and bad news. … The bad news as Will Durant says after he studies thousands of years of history, he says, numbers count. The big nations usually win out over the small nations. Why? First of all he says they have a broad economic base from which they can build their military stocks and other reasons that they translate numbers into power. Numbers count. Big numbers count more.

Are there any exceptions? Well, he sort of gives us a favorable mention right on. The young State of Israel, he mentions, carried by cultural forces over time. So I want to tell you we are the exception. We’re not only an exception; we are the exception, because we’ve been able to break these iron laws of history. We’ve been able to overcome our numbers. … We’ve used our genius to overcome and our initiative and our enterprise to overcome our numbers and we have a dedication, the cultural forces and the commitment to maintain our future. I have no doubt that what we achieved in these 63 years, we can continue to achieve in the coming century.

I have no doubt that we can defend ourselves against much more numerous forces; that we can advance the cause of a secure peace; in a secure, democratic and vibrant state. We’ll continue to build this democracy of ours. We’ll continue to build and defend the one and only Jewish State, the State of Israel. And I want to thank you for helping us do that and we’ll continue to do that. Thank you very much.

Here is the concluding paragraph of the opening chapter of “The Lessons of History,” which will give a sense of the quality of the writing, and then the concluding two paragraphs of the following chapter (“History and the Earth”), which includes the one mention in the book of Israel:

Since man is a moment in astronomic time, a transient guest of the earth, a spore of his species, a scion of his race, a composite of body, character, and mind, a member of a family and a community, a believer or doubter of a faith, a unit in an economy, perhaps a citizen a state or a soldier in an army, we may ask under the corresponding heads – astronomy, geology, geography, biology, ethnology, psychology, morality, religion, economics, politics, and war – what history has to say about the nature, conduct, and prospects of man. It is a precarious enterprise, and only a fool would try to compress a hundred centuries into a hundred pages of hazardous conclusions. We proceed.

***

The development of the airplane will again alter the map of civilization. Trade routes will follow less and less the rivers and seas; men and goods will be flown more and more directly to their goal. Countries like England and France will lose the commercial advantage of abundant coast lines conveniently indented; countries like Russia, China, and Brazil, which were hampered by the excess of their land mass over their coasts, will cancel part of that handicap by taking to the air. Coastal cities will derive less of their wealth from the clumsy business of transferring goods from ship to train or from train to ship. When sea power finally gives place to air power in transport and war, we shall have seen one of the basic revolutions in history.

The influence of geographic factors diminishes as technology grows. The character and contour of a terrain may offer opportunities for agriculture, mining, or trade, but only the imagination and initiative of leaders, and the hardy industry of followers, can transform the possibilities into fact; and only a similar combination (as in Israel today) can make a culture take form over a thousand natural obstacles. Man, not the earth, makes civilization.

"In Darkness" Expands

“In Darkness,” the Polish nominee for Best Foreign Film, expanded last weekend from three three theaters in Los Angeles and New York to 14 theaters. My review at American Thinker is here. Watch the preview and consider going; theater listings are here.

 

Netanyahu on the 63rd Anniversary of the Knesset

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke to the Knesset last week on the 63rd anniversary of its founding. Here is a translation of his remarks, worth reading in their entirety:

Israeli democracy is vibrant and free. There is no democracy more wonderful. Despite all the threats the State of Israel faces, we maintain an exemplary democracy and the heart of Israeli democracy is here in the Knesset. Sixty-three years ago, during the Tu B'Shvat celebrations, the Knesset of Israel gathered for the first time in the Jewish Agency building in Jerusalem. It was a time of ups and downs and of fears, a time of beginnings and growth. The 120 new representatives of the people planted trees on the path leading to the city and later they also planted the foundations of Israeli democracy. The first President of the State, Chaim Weizmann, spoke at that session about the entire world's expectations and said: "The world's watching eyes are now looking upon us to see what path we lay out as we arrange our lives, what image is being shaped for our country; its ears are waiting to hear if new tidings will emerge from Zion."

Distinguished members, 63 years after those words were spoken, we can say clearly and with resolve what tidings have emerged from Zion: a stable and prosperous Israeli democracy; a democracy which has room for arguments and agreements; a democracy which has checks and balances, a legislative body, an executive body and a judicial body (and we have one of the best legal systems in the world and it will remain that way). We respect minority rights and freedom for all without differentiating between religion, race and sex. We have a democracy that withstands the tests and rigors of criticism – by the way, criticism not only domestic but internationally as well. There is no other democracy that is watched more closely, examined so much more that at times it seems that it is being overanalyzed. It is unheard of. We have a democracy that withstands all this; a democracy that repairs itself in an endless process of self-examination, discussion and, if needed, of decisiveness.

I know that there are those who claim that Israeli democracy is in danger. I do not agree with that statement. There are those who complain about the public disagreement here, about the proposed laws that are introduced and retracted, but there is no better proof of the robustness of Israel's democracy than these disagreements and these decisions, than the fact that any individual can criticize here, including the Prime Minister and sometimes even presidents. The fact that anything can be said or discussed here is the best proof of Israeli democracy's strength.

Ladies and gentlemen, when we look at all that is happening around us, in our stormy region, and even when we look further at other democracies – admired democracies like those of the United States and Britain – in times of war, they severely limited civilian rights and personal freedoms, something we have never done. So when we look near and far, we certainly can be proud. There are those who mistakenly consider the holding of elections as an aspect of democracy, but true democracies are truly tested during periods between election, by the way we uphold the justice system, individual rights, freedom of expression, balance between the three branches of government and above all, by the health and strength of our parliament, this house, the Knesset of Israel. In this house, where anything may be proposed, discussed and argued over, it is permissible and even healthy that the opposition fights the elected government.

The importance of these democratic institutions is even more obvious against the background of the upheavals the Middle East is experiencing. We are all asking ourselves what the wave of Islam washing over the Arab people will bring. We all hope real democracies will be established and grow, and the question that should be asked is whether these democracies are one-time phenomena or a democracy that shrinks and disappears between elections. We need to know if respectable and serious institutions will be established to preserve the democracy. Will institutions be established that can withstand the difficult tests any democracy faces? I think it is too soon to tell.

The basic idea of the contract between elected officials and the ruling regime, an idea introduced by the English philosopher Locke, is an idea that has not penetrated vast sections of the world, and certainly not the Middle East. The idea is that he who is elected to rule is granted that rule in trust and returns it and there are limits on the time one rules and on the use of the tools of rule – this is not an obvious idea and it does not find expression and realization in elections alone. This is why we cannot yet know what will happen around us. We know that the test of a democracy's stabilization, in the full sense of the word, is a very difficult test and we can only hope that our neighbors succeed.

My friends, there are actions by extremists in every country, but the test of a true democracy is the way in which it responds to those actions. When we encounter serious incidents like exclusion of women or "price tag" attacks, Israeli democracy is obligated to condemn these incidents and work against them sharply and forcefully. We acted in this manner, and we will continue to act in this manner. Unfortunately, amongst our neighbors there are those who choose to act differently.

I would like to refer specifically to the Palestinian Authority. I said it had to choose, as the President of the State also said, between the path of Hamas and the path of peace, but we saw recently that the Palestinian Authority chose to avoid acting against extremists and even chose
to embrace them. At the same time, its official institutions and its official media channels, which are controlled by the PA, encourage incitement against the Jews, allow anti-Semitic statements under the protection of rule and forge alliances with terrorist organizations that call for the destruction of Israel. We can only hope that they will choose to follow a different path. …

I would like to say two more things to the members of Knesset on this occasion, and also perhaps to the public. … I am not naïve, I don't expect elected MKs to speak as if they were in the English House of Lords – but I do think it can be expected that we act with respect for each other and speak to the point (it may be sharp, but as long as it is to the point and not in slanderous language or personal attacks). I ask this of myself and usually I act in this manner. …

Israel's population is a mosaic of publics – secular and religious, ultra-Orthodox, new immigrants and veteran citizens, Ashkenazim and Sepharadim, Jews, Muslims, Druze and Circassians, Beduoin. We are the young country of an ancient people that has gathered from many Diasporas, and often members of Knesset, even Knesset factions, represent these various populations loyally and with devotion – and there is nothing wrong with that. This is the nature of democracy, especially a representative democracy like ours – to balance between various needs.

Today I ask of all of us, all members of Knesset, to remember that in addition to our being representatives of certain publics, we are first and foremost public representatives – the entire public. We bear the responsibility for the fate of the entire country and the future of the people of Israel. This was the clear mission of the 120 members of the first Knesset and it should be the mission that guides us all today on this day of celebration for the Knesset. The seedlings planted by the first members of Knesset have grown and become a democracy that we can all be proud of, and in the shade of these seedlings, we can all take shelter.

Lessons from North Korea for Israel and Iran

From “Lessons from North Korea for Israel and Iran” at PJ Media:

On January 20, President Obama told a New York reception that “we’re not going to tolerate a nuclear weapon in the hands of this Iranian regime.” Four days later, in his State of the Union address, he issued this declaration:

Let there be no doubt: America is determined to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon,
and I will take no options off the table to achieve that goal.

The words were as direct as presidential language gets: we will not “tolerate” an Iranian nuclear weapon and will take “no options off the table” — complete with Obama’s trademark preface, “Let there be no doubt.” In his Super Bowl interview on Sunday, Obama reiterated that “no option is off the table.”

But this is not the first time an American president declared he would not “tolerate” a nuclear weapon, insisted on dismantlement of a nuclear weapons program, applied crippling sanctions — and then declined to act after the regime violated an explicit presidential warning.

George W. Bush said it in 2003 with respect to North Korea; issued the warning in 2006; failed to act in 2007; and left office with an expanded North Korea nuclear weapons program in place, which expanded dramatically under Barack Obama.

The North Korea story is important not only in itself, but because of its obvious implications for the current face-off with Iran. As Iran evaluates President Obama’s seemingly clear words, it knows what happened — or didn’t happen — with respect to similar rhetoric in the case of North Korea. From the memoirs recently published by George Bush, Dick Cheney, and Condoleezza Rice, we can now piece together what occurred. The story places Obama’s recent words in a context that leads to an important conclusion.

Continue reading here.

Condi's Lessons

From my review of Condoleezza Rice’s memoir, No Higher Honor: A Memoir of My Years in Washington, in the February issue of COMMENTARY:

At 766 pages, Condoleezza Rice’s memoir of her service as national-security adviser and secretary of state is not long as such memoirs go. Henry Kissinger’s ran 3,955 pages in three volumes; George Shultz’s book, covering six and a half years as secretary of state, ran 1,184 pages, with small print; Madeleine Albright’s memoir of her four years, in what was in retrospect a holiday from history, ran 548 pages. Rice covers a decade, starting in 1999 when she joined George W. Bush’s presidential campaign as foreign-affairs adviser.

She has written a straightforward chronological account, providing a great deal of detail but relatively little reflection on the lessons of her experience. The lessons she does draw and that one can draw about her tenure are worth noting, however, particularly on the issue that appears to have been the most important to her personally, to which she devoted most of her last two years as secretary of state and nine chapters (and parts of others) in this book: the Middle East peace process.

Continue reading here.

Leonard Cohen -- Old Ideas, New Songs

Next week, Leonard Cohen releases his 12^th studio album, Old Ideas: An Album of New Songs, recorded after a year-long world tour that featured three-hour long, sold-out shows (the video from the LA one is here) -- including one at Ramat Gan Stadium in Tel Aviv on September 25, 2009, which Cohen held after rejecting Palestinian demands that he cancel it (He not only proceeded, but sang “Lover, Lover, Lover” to the crowd).

The new album has the feel of an elegy. The New Yorker has published the lyrics of the first song, “Going Home.” The poem/lyric is below. After reading it, listen to it here; it is hauntingly beautiful as music. You can also listen to the entire album at NPR, at least for a little while.

 

I love to speak with Leonard

He’s a sportsman and a shepherd

He’s a lazy bastard

Living in a suit

 

But he does say what I tell him

Even though it isn’t welcome

He will never have the freedom

To refuse

 

He will speak these words of wisdom

Like a sage, a man of vision

Though he knows he’s really nothing

But the brief elaboration of a tube

 

Going home

Without my sorrow

Going home

Sometime tomorrow

To where it’s better

Than before

 

Going home

Without my burden

Going home

Behind the curtain

Going home

Without the costume

That I wore

 

He wants to write a love song

An anthem of forgiving

A manual for living with defeat

 

A cry above the suffering

A sacrifice recovering

But that isn’t what I want him to complete

 

I want to make him certain

That he doesn’t have a burden

That he doesn’t need a vision

 

That he only has permission

To do my instant bidding

That is to SAY what I have told him

To repeat

 

Going home

Without my sorrow

Going home

Sometime tomorrow

Going home

To where it’s better

Than before

 

Going home

Without my burden

Going home

Behind the curtain

Going home

Without the costume

That I wore

 

I love to speak with Leonard

He’s a sportsman and a shepherd

He’s a lazy bastard

Living in a suit

 

Back in 2007, Cohen published “The Book of Longing,” and “Going Home makes me recall the title poem from that book -- which reads as follows, with the hyphen in “G-d” in the original, a song/poem perhaps addressed to you:

 

I can’t make the hills

The system is shot

I’m living on pills

For which I thank G-d

 

I followed the course

From chaos to art

Desire the horse

Depression the cart

 

I sailed like a swan

I sank like a rock

But time is long gone

Past my laughing stock

 

My page was too white

My ink was too thin

The day wouldn’t write

What the night penciled in

 

My animal howls

My angel’s upset

But I’m not allowed

A trace of regret

 

For someone will use

What I couldn’t be

My heart will be hers

Impersonally

 

She’ll step on the part

She’ll see what I mean

My will cut in half

And freedom between

 

For less than a second

Our lives will collide

The endless suspended.

The door open wide

 

Then she will be born

To someone like you

What no one has done

She’ll continue to do

 

I know she is coming

I know she will look

And that is the longing

And this is the book

Since he wrote that poem/lyric, Cohen held his world tour, released a CD with 12 songs from it, and has now produced 10 new songs on this latest CD to be released this week. Hallelujah.

Wandering Down the Paths of Memory

Today is a significant one in Jewish history. Sixteen years ago today, the President of Israel, Ezer Weizman, 71 years old, born in Tel Aviv, addressed a joint session of the German Bundestag and Bundesrat, the first such speech by an Israeli president and only the fourth by a foreign head of state in Germany.

He spoke in Hebrew. It is one of the most remarkable speeches ever given by a Jewish leader. Here is how it began:

It was fate that delivered me and my contemporaries into this great era, when the Jews returned to and re-established their homeland. I am no longer a wandering Jew who migrates from country to country, from exile to exile. But all Jews in every generation must regard themselves as if they had been there, in previous generations, places, and events. Therefore, I am still a wandering Jew, but not along the far-flung paths of the world. Now I migrate through the expanses of time, from generation to generation, down the paths of memory.

Memory shortens distances. Two hundred generations have passed since my people first
came into being, and to me they seem like a few days. Only two hundred generations have passed since a man named Abraham rose up and left his country and birthplace for the country that is today mine. Only two hundred generations have elapsed from the day Abraham purchased the Cave of Makhpela in the city of Hebron to the murderous conflicts that have taken place there in my generation.

Only one hundred fifty generations have passed from the Pillar of Fire of the Exodus from Egypt to the pillars of smoke from the Holocaust. And I, a descendant of Abraham, born in Abraham's country, have witnessed them all.

I was a slave in Egypt. I received the Torah at Mount Sinai. Together with Joshua and Elijah, I crossed the Jordan River. I entered Jerusalem with David, was exiled from it with Zedekiah, and did not forget it by the rivers of Babylon. When the Lord returned the captives of Zion, I dreamed among the builders of its ramparts. I fought the Romans and was banished from Spain. I was bound to the stake in Mainz. I studied Torah in Yemen and lost my family in Kishinev. I was incinerated in Treblinka, rebelled in Warsaw, and emigrated to the Land of Israel, the country whence I had been exiled and where I had been born, from which I come and to which I return.

I am a wandering Jew who follows in the footsteps of his forebears, and just as I escorted them there and then, so do my forebears accompany me and stand here with me today.

Then he thanked everyone for the honor, noted how many familiar and friendly faces were before him, expressed gratitude for the friendship of Germany, and told his audience that it was not an easy visit -- since only 50 years, “a mere moment in the lengthy history of my people,” had
passed since the end of World War II:

It is not easy for me to travel around this country and hear the memories and voices crying out to me from the ground. It is not easy for me to stand here and speak with you, my friends in this house. Jews have lived in Germany for a thousand years or more. German Jewry was the oldest Jewish community in Europe until the Nazis destroyed it. From the first traders who came here in the footsteps of the Romans to the scientists of the twentieth century, from Kalonymos to Mendelssohn, from the blood libel of Fulda to the horrors of Kristallnacht; from the badge of shame to the yellow patch; from Martin Luther's anti-Semitic missives to the Nuremberg Laws, from the commentaries of Rashi to the poems of Heinrich Heine; Rabbeinu Gershom, the Light of the Exile; Walther Rathenau; Martin Buber; Franz Rosenzweig; Albert Einstein -- these are only some of the names that this country has known.

Among the millions of my people's children whom the Nazis led to their deaths, there were other names that we might have uttered here today with the same degree of esteem and admiration. But we do not know their names. How many unwritten books died with them? How many uncomposed symphonies suffocated in their throats? How many scientific discoveries did not mature in their intellects? Every one of them was killed twice: once as a child led by the Nazis to the camps, and again as the adult he or she might have been. The Nazis stole them not only from their families and their people, but from the whole of humankind. I, as President of the State of Israel, can grieve for them and commemorate them, but I cannot forgive in their name.

Then he turned to the present:

We did not return to our borders in warships; we did not march home waving spears. We returned in convoys of dreamers and in boats of oppressed refugees. We returned, and, like our forefather King David who purchased the Temple Mount, and our patriarch Abraham who bought the Cave of Makhpela, we bought land, we sowed fields, we planted vineyards, we built houses, and even before we achieved statehood, we were already bearing weapons to protect our lives.

Time and again we stretched out our hands, and time and again we were rejected. Time and again we went to war; time and again we killed and were killed. Time and again we left our homes, offices, universities, and orchards for the battlefields. Time and again we discovered that beyond even the greatest victories, only crises and losses lurked. …

In the last century, since we returned to our country, we have built more than villages and towns, factories and barns, shops and army bases. We have also installed democratic governance and built a massive cultural and educational system: schools, research institutes, libraries, museums, conservatories, and universities. But transcending all of these -- which exist in any civilized state -- we have wrought a unique cultural miracle: the revival of our language, the Hebrew language. It is the language in which I am speaking to you now, the language which, more than anything else, symbolizes and attests to our revival.

We and our language are alive. We who have arisen from the ashes, and the language that waited in the shrouds of Torah scrolls and between the pages of the prayerbooks, are alive. The language that was whispered in prayer only, that was read only in synagogues, that was sung only in liturgy, that was shrieked in the gas chambers -- in the prayer "Shma Yisrael" -- has been revived. I know that German is richer than Hebrew in many ways, but I do not lack the words to express my feelings, nor have Jews ever lacked words to express their faith, love, dreams, yearnings, and hopes.

We have developed a suitable vocabulary for our special needs. We await, we yearn, we desire, we anticipate, we long for, we hope, we thirst, we crave, we imagine.... I stop here in order to apologize to the interpreters in case they find it hard to select the right words. …

We still pray in Hebrew, but now we also use it to speak, to write, to work and study, to argue, to court each other, and to sing. And the miracle is all the greater because if Isaiah, Solomon, and Jesus were here today, they would understand what I am saying just as I and my daughter and grandchildren understand their words, spoken and written and preserved in the same language thousands of years ago. …

There was a lot more in the speech. But here was his final paragraph:

Ladies and gentlemen, we are a people of memory and prayer. We are a people of words and hope. We have neither established empires nor built castles and palaces. We have only placed words on top of each other. We have fashioned ideas; we have built memorials. We have dreamed towers of yearnings -- of Jerusalem rebuilt, of Jerusalem united, of a peace that will be swiftly and speedily established in our days. Amen.

Israel, Palestinians, and the Aged Leaders of Fatah

Thank you to Children of Jewish Holocaust Survivors (CJHS), which has distributed my post at COMMENTARY entitled “Reminiscing with the Aged Leaders of Fatah.”

The post includes two important quotations from Australian foreign editor Greg Sheridan's report on his trip to Israel this week. 

As for the rest of the post, it’s best to read it while listening to Adele sing “Rolling in the Deep” (“I can’t help feeling . . . we could have had it all”).